& CULTURAL SURVIVAL

CULTURE CHANGE

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The Cultures Studied in this Course• Have all been re-shaped by colonialism

& capitalism• There is no un-touched, “pristine”

society• People we have studied have been

changed by 4 major processes:

• Genocide (Mayan peasants)• Ethnocide (!Kung, Yanomami)• Assimilation (Native Americans, Bakairí)• Resistance (Mayans, Kayapó)

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Some History…

• 1519: Conquest & territorial domination of Western Hemisphere– Complete by 1600– Native populations

reorganized by Spanish, Portuguese

– Indigenous labor used in mines (Tío), plantations (Menchú), haciendas (Mexican peasants)

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Rapid Population Decimation• 1519: 25 ML 1600: 1 ML• Yanomami: 1980—10,000;

1988—1/4 died

• 16-19th C. African Slave Trade– Colonial powers turned to Africa for labor– 10 ML slaves shipped to America

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In Africa

• Congo: 8 ML died in 25 years as result of genocide & slavery

• German settlers in SW Africa– War of extinction vs. Herero if they did not

surrender their lands – Resistance: 1500 troops with machine guns

surrounded & massacred 500 Herero (genocide)

– Poisoned water holes

• !Kung San: Boers, British, South Africa, reservations

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Colonization

• Europe assumed military, political, & economic dominance

• 1885: Imperialist powers partitioned Africa into colonies– “To bring the benefits of civilization to primitive peoples & end their barbarous customs”

• This constituted an internationally approved mandate for ETHNOCIDEETHNOCIDE

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German Colonial Administrator:“The native tribes must withdraw from the lands on which they have pastured their cattle & so let the white man pasture his cattle on these lands…for people of the culture standard of the South African natives, the loss of their barbarism & development of a class of workers in the service of the whites is primarily a law of existence in the highest degree…this existence is justified in the degree that it is useful in the progress of development”

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Customs seen as Backward, Primitive

• “Customs of native groups, in so far as they threaten European control or offend western notions of morality must be abandoned”

• “Colonial authorities have the right in virtue of their relatively civilized position to savages to enforce abstinence from immoral & degrading practices”

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“Primitive” Customs seen as Obstacles to Progress:

• Infanticide (!Kung)• Bride price (Tiv)• Polygyny (Bakairí)• Polyandry (Nepal)• Kinship obligations (Bedouin)• Extended families (India, Taiwan)

“a drag on economic development & a serious obstacle of economic progress”

• Initiation rites (Masaai)• Shamanism (Jívaro)• Tribal warfare (Yanomami)

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Genocide in Australia

• 1803-76: Tasmanians were extinct within 73 years of contact

• British wanted land for sheep grazing• Tasmanians were shot down like

animals for sport• Skulls were exhibited

in museums• Truganini—the last Tasmanian

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Native Americans

• 1830s: Trail of Tears– 4000 Cherokee died– (1/4 population)

• Villages burned, given blankets infected with smallpox

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Education as Assimilation• 1889-1909: UMM Boarding School

• Hopi– Taught language of the dominant culture– Imposed western dress, English names– Forbidden to speak native language

• African textbook:“It is an advantage for a native to work for a white man, because the whites are better educated, more advanced in civilization than the natives and thanks to white men, the natives will make more rapid progress”

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Industrial Revolution

• Required raw materials & marketsThe destruction of indigenous peoples was unparalleled in its scope

• 1780-1930: Tribal populations declined by 30 ML as a direct result of the spread of industrial civilization

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Neo-Colonialism

• By the 20th C.: major dislocations, population decline, reorganization

• World War II was a watershed• Shift from political to economic domination• People everywhere are integrated into the

world economic system• Autonomous people within state

boundaries are seen as a threat (pastoralists)

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Huarani, Ecuador• Progress Brings death to Amazon

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Slain bishop & nun victims of Indians’ bitter struggle to

survive “civilization”

• Oil companies & pacification

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Friday: “Trinkets & Beads”

• “The latest victim of a brutal cultural struggle that has pitted a dwindling band of primitive warriors against civilization’s formidable army of oil companies, settlers, & christian missionaries”

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Ecologist:• “The people who keep taking stuff

out of th forest are like shoppers at a closeout sale, rushing in & taking what they can, as fast as they can, before somebody else gets the last piece of goods”

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Genocide in Rwanda:Ancient Tribal Hatreds?

• Original Twa hunters & gatherers• Hutu settle area 1000 AD,

monarchy dominated Twa• 16th C. Tutsi herders enter• 1884 Germans colonize, racist ideology vs.

Hutus • After WW I Belgium took over colonial

control, racist doctrines• Replace Hutu chiefs with Tutsis

– Ethnic Identity cards– Allow Tutsis to take over Hutu lands– Require peasants to grow export crops (coffee)

Hutu rebels

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• 1950s Tutsis struggle for independence• Belgians switch support to Hutus• 1962 independence; Hutu limit Tutsi

access to education, government jobs• 1973 military coup• 1974 World Bank project for cattle ranches

disadvantages Tutsi herders

Tutsi refugees

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• 1989 coffee prices collapsed (major export)

– Loss of income, famine• 1990 IMF austerity program impoverished

farmers & workers– Cuts to education, health care– Malnutrition

• Tutsi refugees invade, French provide military aid to the government

• Death squads emerge, racial hatred toward Tutsis

• Hutu state formed, committed to genocide– 50,000 Hutus & Tutsis killed

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• 1994 800,000 Tutsis slaughtered by Hutu-run state

• The causes were carefully obscured– Based on Western stereotypes of savage

Africans– “Tribal warfare involving those without the

veneer of Western civilization”– Genocide not recognized until months later

• As changes are instituted to accommodate capital accumulation, lives are disrupted & conditions created that fuel hatred & violence

• Colonial history, state genocide, global economic integration

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• “World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, visiting a Rwandan genocide memorial, apologized on Thursday on behalf of the international community for not trying to prevent the 1994 slaughter”

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Policies of Assimilation

• (!Kung, Bakairí, Kayapó, Bedouin)• Community control of land –

replaced by private property– 1887 Dawes Act

• Corporate kinship groups based on kinship relations – incomprehensible to dominant society

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Economic Development

• Incorporate indigenous people into the capitalist economy--

• Forced labor

• Requirement to pay taxes in cash– Work on plantations, mines, cash crops

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Azande

• (Sudan, horticulturalists):– Introduction of cotton as cash crop– 1980s decline of cotton market left

Azande in economic ruin

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Guaraní (Paraguay)

• Egalitarian horticulturalists, hunting & gathering, fishing, collection of forest products for sale (agroforestry)

• Integrated into European markets since contact, maintained sustainability– Engaged global economic system

without becoming dependentMate Yerba

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Capitalist Expansion in Paraguay

• Dramatic expansion of agricultural cash-crop production

• Rainforest felled for intensive, industrial agriculture

• Lumbering to extract hardwood for U.S. market (parquet floors)

• 1970—6.8 ML has. 1984—2.1 ML has.

• Small-scale producers displaced• Floral & faunal diversity destroyed

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• Guaraní Cash-crop disappeared, they enter market economy as waged laborers on cotton & tobacco plantations

• 1995: 3 suicides/month (unknown before)

• Economic development spawned by the needs of the global economy are destroying Guaraní

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• A casualty of the expansion of the culture of capitalism is cultural diversity

• With incorporation into the world market economy “their standard of living is lowered, not raised, by economic progress… This is perhaps the most outstanding & inescapable fact to emerge from the years of research that anthropologists have devoted to the study of culture change”

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Resistance: Sioux Ghost Dance

• The Ghost Dance was a spiritual movement in the late 1880s in reaction to the destruction of Native American cultures

• Wovoka died, went to the spirit world, returned as a prophet

• Nativistic Movement• Told people to return to

the old ways, continue dancing & whites would be destroyed, the dead & the buffalo would return

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1890: Wounded Knee• Wovoca had told people “You must not

do harm to anyone. You must not fight.”

• People believed the ghost shirts they wore made them impervious to bullets

• Army troops arrived, killed 200 Lakota & Chief Big Foot

• Gen. Sheridan: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”

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Resistance: Cargo Cults

• Milenarian Movements (esp. Melanesia)• Exposure to whites & material goods

during World War II• Context of rapid social change, foreign

domination, relative deprivation• Tribal people did all the work, whites

owned all the goods

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• Converted to Christianity, but cargo did not arrive

• To acquire wealth through ritual means

• Creation of a new world by mimicking Europeans– Whites knew the secret of cargo– Whites had stolen cargo from ancestors

• Built airstrips, killed pigs, abandoned gardens, destroyed native wealth

• Ancestors would arrive with cargo in ships & planes

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• “John Frum (messiah) promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him: Radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful things.”

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Total Incompatibility

• Tribal economies aimed at satisfaction of subsistence needs– Hunters & gatherers– Horticulturalists– Pastoralists– Peasants

• And the culture of consumption– (A Poor Man Shames Us All)

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How is the culture of indigenous peoples

incompatible with the culture of capitalism?

• Communal ownership—land & valued resources can not be purchased

• Distribution through sharing, gift-giving, labor reciprocity reduce need to consume & work for wages

• People are not naturally driven to accumulate wealth

• Conservation strategies make lands less subject to exploitation for profit

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Culture of Capitalism

• Capitalism seeks continual expansion, growth to obtain new markets, to promote consumption, increase profits

• Indigenous cultures are thus vulnerable to destruction by capitalist expansion

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Walmart

• 3000+ U.S. Walmarts sell at lowest cost– $245 BL sales– Largest private

employer in Mexico

• Acting as Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”

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Polanyi’s Paradox• Externalities:

– Forces companies to reduce production & labor costs– Loss of 1000s of jobs as companies shift to other

countries– Imports 12% Chinese exports, workers earn $32/month– Environmental damage– Energy resources for transporting goods around world

• These costs do not appear on the price tag• Buyers are not saving money; they pass the cost

on to someone else• 1% of the profits of 5 Walmart owners could pay

decent wages & health insurance to all of its employees

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Consumerism

• We are all involved:• Progress is synonymous with having

things--Macs, PCs, Cells, DVDs, IPODs• Other cultures survived 1000s of years

without these luxuries; their lives were not “nasty, brutish, & short” (Hobbes)

• But based on family ties, kinship relations, sharing, cooperation

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Diseases of Industrial Society

– Hypertension, circulatory system, mental stress, diabetes, obesity

– Malnutrition is a hazard of “progress”

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Is Sociocultural Diversity Worth Preserving?

• Medicines: anthropologists have catalogued indigenous knowledge– Malaria: Peru—Quinine from the bark of

the cinchona tree (“Out of the Forest”)– Diabetes, leukemia, Hodgkins disease—

Madagascar periwinkle– Muscle relaxants—S. America (poison

arrows with poison from the chondodendron tree)

– Aspirin: Native Americans—willow bark

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Adaptive Wisdom• Slash & burn horticulture (Bakairí,

Kayapó)• Technologies that do not destroy the

environment• Crop varieties selected over 1000s of

years– High protein content: amaranth

(Mesoamerica), Quinoa (Peru), Tepary Bean (Papago)

• Self-sufficiency

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What Is Progress?• The reckless pursuit of “progress”

has brought the wholesale destruction of indigenous peoples

• Racism, ethnocentrism, evolutionary ideas about progress justified the atrocities committed against tribal peoples – AND CONTINUE TO DO SO !!!

Civilization

Barbarism

Savagery

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“Progress”

• Bt corn in Mexico– GM foods– Patents– Pesticide poisonings– Contamination of environment

• Progress has brought erosion, over-grazing, deforestation

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“Progress”

• From hunting & gathering to market capitalism

– Increasing centralization of power– Increasing concentration of access to

wealth, power, prestige– Shift from egalitarian sharing of

resources to increasing gap between elite & poor

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PARADOX

• Hunting & gathering societies – equality• Industrial nations – poverty,

homelessness (A Poor Man Shames Us All)

ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF BEING HUMAN SHOULD BE VALUED & ARE

WORTH PRESERVING !